2025 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN MrsSD - The Joy of Decluttering

Florenceem

Taking Mr F to see the Dr this afternoon. Between 11 pm and 6.30 am - 71/2 hours - he spent 21/2 on the toilet. I struggle to get off to sleep when I get in bed and he is on the toilet and he wakes me up when he gets into bed. I am exhausted.

London_1

Good afternoon chums , i've been so busy in the garden and still decluttering odds and ends for the past few months I've barely been online at all

The building worked is all done ,now we are redesigning the garden

There is a large patio, then another same sized 25 sq metres of membrane covered with small stones and pebbles before you get to the lawn.
I've never had a garden so full of stones before

Talking to the neighbour apparently where the two houses are now it used to be a pub car park and our garden is chockablock full of stones The houses themselves were built in 1997 but why the previous owner decided that a large patio plus an equally large pebbled are before the lawn was a good Idea I can't imagine
We have had two quotes to pave it over and another chaps coming tomorrow.
The ground is rock hard, and every time we want to plant anything we have to soak it in water first as its like digging up a building site

DGS Ben bless him at Easter managed to dig me a patch for my spuds, and they are just staring to flower now, I have four pretty good tomato plants three in a grow bag and one in a large pot

Every inch in the garden, and its about 120 ft x 25 ft has to be dug and sieved of stones before you can plant anything.Its time consuming, plus we wanted to wait to see what's actually in the back garden before planting much. Most of my seedlings have been put into large deep pots to be replanted, as I get a bit of decent diggable earth

DD has even dug up fossils from the garden which she looked up and they are 25 million years old (I think they were dropped when they covered the ground in stones )  

There is a lot of old sea shells there as well, I think I shall be decluttering a fair amount of cash to get the garden into shape
But we have settled in very nicely here, and I am enjoying the IoW immensely 

All the grandchildren have been over to visit at various times, and Christmas was brilliant we had a house full of noise and four large grandsons. 

DGS Ben is still enjoying his inner city teaching life  in London and is courting (I'm hoping this is The One )
DGS Jack is now head of his department at the boarding school he teaches at
DGS Henry has just had a three and half week holiday with his Uni pals to Thailand where they avoided the cities and hiked up into the mountains he loved every minute 
the youngest Mikey will be staring his last year at Uni in September ,but at the moment is loved up with his very pretty girlfriend in Colchester, but he says he will be over for a month or so from midJuly

I can't believe we have been here almost a year now, the time just seems to fly by, the days are so busy at time i've joined a few groups and still do lots of knitting and have been to several quiz nights, so life is pretty full on.
My eldest DD and her OH are in NYC at the moment visiting my eldest grandson and wife and great granddaughter .She will be 2 next month !

I sadly lost three of my old friends in the past few months, my oldest friend from Dartford sadly passed away with dementia and caught a bug in hospital just after Christmas. 
But I'm still alive and kicking and had a nice email from New Roads Ahead today so I thought I'd better sign in and let you know all is well

I hope everyone is OK and enjoying the lighter evenings Tennis will be starting soon and I love watching Wimbledon

My late husbands favourite team whom he followed for over 40 years won the FA cup and I was cheering like mad for The Eagles as we used to live almost around the corner from Selhurst Park in the 1960s

Well that's about all my news for the moment Take care everyone I'm off to make a cuppa 

Cheers JackieO xxx

suzeesu2000

Lovely to see you again London_1, missed your posts.

From the other end of the IOW xx

WickedLady4

Phew! Lovely to hear you are ok @London_1. I was getting worried!

GrannyKate

Just a quick post.  Pleased to see you @London_1 - like you after 7 months I feel moving was the right choice.  I've never been a particular fan of football but I resonated with your thoughts on Crystal Palace as I thought how pleased my dad would have been - this year it will be 44 years since he died.  He was a Palace fan all his life being born nearby in West Croydon and attending Selhurst Grammar School not far from their ground. Many years ago in the 1950s I attended one of their games with him - so very different to today's stadiums.  Open steps with occasional wooden railings and people selling pop and hot dogs at the back.  

Need to get on with frogs for tomorrow.  I spent money on random items today but nothing too expensive apart from paying DD my share of our December trip.

547 Two bags dropped off at CS
548 December holiday paid for
549 Two folding chair pads replaced with new thicker ones

weenancyinAmerica

@London_1 - so glad to see you. We were trying to figure out how to track you down if we didn't hear from you soon. Wonderful to hear that things are going well for you. We worry when people don't post. So please keep it up - at least once a week.

YBR

Hi  London_1, sounds like you've got your hands full with that garden, glad you're enjoying the island.

Most of this morning was spent looking for a new car to replace DH's (which is 12+ years old and the electronics are on the way out). We've found a 2 year old Kia and so there's some urgent frogs tackled to transfer money and sort insurance to pick it up later this week. I asked the chap on the test drive to let us switch over somewhere quite as it's a manual and I normally drive an electric car. Even in DH's familiar old car, it takes a little while to remember what my left foot is for!

Apart from that I re-tidied the den-making fabrics that DD2 got out a week ago, and stacked a good number of empty boxes and packing stuff out the way. I've been through some stuff stashed under a table and behind the piano, leaving a couple of trays of stuff that's for DH to sort. I have some random bits of MDF to break up into the bin.

charlies_tribe

mehefin said:

Just popping in!
@charlies_tribe re trampolines .Not sure if you know but if not you need to be aware that trampolines 'bounce' differently depending on their shape. The ubiquitous round ones are designed to bounce the user into the middle so they are generally safer in a garden. The oblong ones are more like leisure centre ones, and the jumper has to control the bounce themselves which is why you always see spotters at leisure centre. It is very easy to go off course. DS used to compete and we eventually gave in and bought a reasonable quality oblong one for the garden, which he spent hours on. The bed was similar to the round ones but the springing and frame was  heavy duty ( and heavy to move too).A 'proper' woven mesh bed trampoline is BIG money, but there are very good ones at reasonable prices for outdoor use.

Thank you. DD2 uses it for gymnastics too, flips and things. She scares me sometimes. Think they're both struggling without it so really need to look at replacing it. 

Florenceem, I hope the doctors went well and you got some help.

Today I have cleaned the brush out on the hoover, then had to replace all the bag and filters as nothing was going in to the bag. Hoovered hall, stairs and landing and mopped hall. Washed and dried all coats and either hung back ul or put away, washed all curtains and dried, they need to go back up tomorrow. Took every CD, DVD, and video game off the shelfs on the landing. All shelfs and boxes dusted and everything put back in a sort of order so now kids can find each console game together, 18 rated DVDs together etc... I think it might, only might, have convinced DH to get rid of all the CDs. DVDs might take a bit longer even though they've not been used in years. I have got a box set of ben 10 DVDs for the bin as they were well used and full of scratches and missing disks.
Sorry for the detailed breakdown but it makes me feel a bit better knowing I've actually done something after a couple of weeks of nothing. 

901-902 2 ds game boxes
903  Plug
904  Pencil
905  Ear pods

Suffolksue

Lovely to see London 1 I’m v relieved too ,I’m in Yarmouth ( just outside) so the other end until Friday .
been here many times in the past and it’s still lovely 

stay safe all 

Florenceem

London 1  - missed you!
I took Mr F out yesterday but after we walked down into town - regretted it - he was so unsteady.
Dropped stuff off at 2 charity shops.
I needed cash and to stock up on sweets and chocolate.
Managed to get Mr F to the surgery this afternoon. Mr F now has tablets to widen the neck of his bladder to see if that helps with his long toilet sitting.
He also has antibiotics for a UTI - just in case.
When we got back from seeing the Dr - had something to eat and a cup of tea before going to a meeting at SA.